Lifeboat Foundation

I think AI agent workflows will drive massive AI progress this year — perhaps even more than the next generation of foundation models. This is an important trend, and I urge everyone who works in AI to pay attention to it.

Demonstrating a long-coherence dual-rail erasure qubit using tunable transmons.

AWS today reported demonstrating an improved approach to quantum error correction that accounts for flip and phase errors in qubits with less overhead (redundant qubits) and on time scales that allow for effective error correction. The work, published today in APS Physical Review X, uses what’s called dual-rail erasure qubits.

Broadly, qubits undergo three types, report AWS researchers Harry Levine and Arbel Haim, in a blog (A new building block for error-corrected quantum computers) today, “[The] vast majority of errors (96%) in our dual-rail qubit are erasure errors (leakage to |00 ⟩), with only a small fraction (4%) of residual (silent) bit-flip and phase-flip errors. This is a strong indicator that if we can accurately flag the erasures, then we can efficiently correct most errors that occur in this system.”

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We don’t live in a universe where matter floats around in empty space… we live in a universe of energy fields that spread throughout the universe and interact with one another, creating everything we see in the process.

Researchers report that lipid droplets in brain cells may be a more significant factor in the development of Alzheimer’s disease than previously thought.

Human brains preserve in diverse environments for at least 12 000 years—new research in Proceedings B this week: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2023.

Soft tissue preservation in the geological record is relatively rare, and when an archaeologist digs a human skull out of the…

The brain is thought to be among the first human organs to decompose after death. The discovery of brains preserved in the archaeological record is therefore regarded as unusual. Although mechanisms such as dehydration, freezing, saponification, and tanning are known to allow for the preservation of the brain on short time scales in association with other soft tissues (≲4000 years), discoveries of older brains, especially in the absence of other soft tissues, are rare. Here, we collated an archive of more than 4,400 human brains preserved in the archaeological record across approximately 12 000 years, more than 1,300 of which constitute the only soft tissue preserved amongst otherwise skeletonized remains. We found that brains of this type persist on time scales exceeding those preserved by other means, which suggests an unknown mechanism may be responsible for preservation particular to the central nervous system. The untapped archive of preserved ancient brains represents an opportunity for bioarchaeological studies of human evolution, health and disease.

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The Einasto Supercluster is so vast that it would take a light signal 360 million years to get from one end to the other.

The new map, dubbed Quaia, includes around 1,295,502 quasars from across the visible Universe and could help astronomers better understand the properties of dark matter.

Researched and Written by Leila BattisonNarrated and Edited by David KellyArt by Khail KupskyThumbnail Art and Art by Ettore MazzaIf you like our videos, che…

Serina Jain, who is a student at San Francisco University High School, said in a statement, “This experience further propelled my fascination with the subject of astronomy, specifically in regard to exoplanetary science.”

How can high school contribute to finding exoplanets? The answer is easy and effective, as a recent study published in The Astronomical Journal announced the confirmation of exoplanet TIC 139,270,665 b with the help of an enthusiastic group of high school students who are part of the Unistellar Citizen Science Network, which is a worldwide collaboration of citizen astronomers. This discovery holds the potential to not only improve the hunt for exoplanets, but also improve the chances of citizen scientists using public data to contribute to finding exoplanets, as well.

The confirmation of TIC 139,270,665 b, which is located approximately 483 light-years from Earth, was made through a collaboration between SETI Institute Affiliate, Dr. Dan Peluso, and Chabot Space & Science Center’s Galaxy Explorer program, the latter of which consists of high school students. TIC 139,270,665 b was initially found using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), where it measured one transit in front of its parent star.

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